Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) allow users with heterogeneous terminals to exchange structured messages composed of text, audio, images, and video. The rapid development of the mobile-communications technology contributes to the rapid proliferation of mobile terminals of different types, thus creating interoperability problems. Consequently, signals may need adaptations to be compatible with target terminal's characteristics while maximizing visual quality. Such problems also arise in video streaming where content needs to be adapted to support various terminals operating over numerous wired and wireless networks.
There is a need to develop signal adaptation techniques which optimize performance while taking into account constraints relevant to encoding as well as constraints relevant to storage and transfer of encoded signals.